Actions made lasting impression

February 01, 2006|HOWARD DUKES Tribune Staff Writer

SOUTH BEND -- Those who met Coretta Scott King when she spoke here at an event sponsored by the South Bend Chapter of Indiana Black Expo in 1992 may remember her actions more than her words. Gladys Muhammad, associate director of the South Bend Heritage Foundation, presented King with an award from the Martin Luther King Jr. Foundation of St. Joseph County. King died Monday. "What I remember most about her was her kindness," Muhammad said. "She was kind, humble and sweet." Others who met King on her visits to this area, or when they met her on travels to other parts of the country, had similar observations. King understood that people respected her for the role she played during the civil rights movement, Muhammad said. Yet, King seemed at peace with herself, and that made her approachable, Muhammad said. King was surrounded by autograph-seekers and well-wishers the moment she stepped away from the lectern. "She hugged people," Muhammad said. "There was nothing arrogant about her at all. "She met and talked with people and shook people's hands." Dorothy Smith, a volunteer at the Charles Martin Youth Center, met King more than a decade earlier. Smith said she was with a tour group that was visiting the King Center in Atlanta. The group was standing in front of the reflecting pool where the crypt of King's husband, slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., is located when she came out to greet them. "She was so kind," Smith said. "She would put her hand on you when she talked to you." Smith said King then took the group on a tour of the center. She showed the group the shirt Martin Luther King was wearing when he was assassinated. Then King led a tour of Ebenezer Baptist Church, which was the Rev. Martin Luther King's home church for the final years of his life. All the while, King talked to her visitors. "She didn't use big words or act glamorous or arrogant," Smith said. Cora Breckenridge, an Elkhart resident and a member of the national board of directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, remembers when King came to Elkhart in 1980 to campaign on behalf of Democratic Congressman John Brademas, who was running against John Hiler in Indiana's 3rd District. She appeared at St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church in Elkhart, the church Breckenridge attends. Breckenridge said King probably remembered Brademas' votes in favor of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Brademas lost the race to Hiler. Six years later, King returned to the area to campaign in Michigan City for Katie Hall, who ran in the 1st Congressional District Democratic primary against the eventual victor, incumbent Peter Visclosky. During that address, King encouraged people to vote, recalling the days when blacks in the South were prevented from doing so. King returned to South Bend in 1987 to receive an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame. Her last visit to the area came 12 years later when she attended a benefit roast honoring the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, Notre Dame's president emeritus. "I believe in thanking those who stood up for civil rights when it wasn't a popular cause," she said.